The present invention relates to a method and kit for assessing anxiety or anxiety disposition in a subject and, more particularly, to methods for qualifying ChE and PON expression levels and in particular the relationship therebetween, which methods enable assessment of anxiety.
Anxiety involves complex, incompletely understood interactions of genomic, environmental and experience-derived factors and is currently being measured by psychological criteria. Anxiety is a ubiquitous and unavoidable experience of life, and is defined as a feeling of fear that is out of proportion to the nature of the threat. Anxiety disorders are reported to be the most prevalent of psychiatric disorders.
Anxiety, or susceptibly to anxiety, is typically assessed by evaluating responses from subjects to specific questions relating to danger and stress. For example, the two 20-item self-report questionnaires of the state-trait anxiety inventory (STAI) are commonly used to measure anxiety. STAI scores increase in response to physical danger and psychological stress or in neurotic and depressed subjects, and decrease as a result of relaxation training.
While reducing the present invention to practice, the present inventor has correlated between expression levels of AChE/BChE and PON and in particular an expression ratio therebetween and predisposition to anxiety or early state of anxiety.
Thus, the present invention enables for the first time biochemical or molecular diagnosis of Anxiety.